A return to Birkwith on September 10 with
revealed more to this superb caving area. Dave Walker disappeared
quickly whilst new boy Ian Cummins and yours truly spent a fruitless
half hour trying to get into Dismal Hill Cave through the original
entrance. The crawl into the river passage from the bottom of the
entrance climb looked quite impossibly low, much lower than the almost
impossibly low crawl experienced some years before. Now beginning to
miss Dave we came out of that hole and went for the new shaft a few
yards. With a new ferret to do the tricky bits, Ian readily
investigating, we found that the new manhole entrance is quite an easy
climb directly into the river passage. This, of course is a brilliant
streamway with deep, very deep, canals and swims. No sign of Dave until
regaining the surface an hour or so later. He had taken the upstream
route via traverses over the lake and a new route via Micks End to
emerge from Old Ing. Brilliant stuff!

We realised that the old entrance being little used had probably silted up in the bottom crawl.

Turning
efforts to Birkwith, our pet ferret was only too eager to give his new
hybrid suit a further trial by swimming to the end of the lake and
back. More brilliant stuff

This took place on a stunningly beautiful late summer day, and you all missed it.